The project started at the end of 2017, after MIT was selected by MUFG following a competitive process to support its Commodity Trade Finance team in London, with a view to potentially implementing it globally in a second stage.
Jean-Marie Le Fouest, Head of Commodity & Structured Trade Finance EMEA said: “We’ve strongly increased the business over the past two years, and it was vital for us to adopt a robust system to support our significant growth”.
Paul Cohen Dumani, MIT’s General Manager declared: “We’re happy to welcome such a prestigious reference in our community of users” adding that “TRAC’s true multi-branch and multi time-zone architecture will be key, when MUFG decides to roll out the system globally”.

About MUFG (www.mufg.jp/english )

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFG) is one of the world’s leading financial groups. Headquartered in Tokyo and with approximately 360 years of history, MUFG has a global network with over 1,800 offices in more than 50 countries. The Group has over 150,000 employees, and offers services including commercial banking, trust banking, securities, credit cards, consumer finance, asset management, and leasing.
The Group aims to be the world’s most trusted financial group through close collaboration among its operating companies, and to respond to all of the financial needs of its clients, serving society, and fostering shared and sustainable growth for a better world.

MUFG’s shares trade on the Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York stock exchanges.

After considering several options for back and middle-office solutions, Bank GPB International SA, a member of the Gazprombank group, has selected the MIT’s Trade Finance platform to support its strong ambition of developing its Commodity Trade Finance business from Luxemburg.

The MIT platform chosen by the bank comprises CREDOC, the flagship back-end trade finance solution from the Swiss software editor, and TRAC, its middle/front collateral management system, which provide support for transactional commodity finance and structured trade finance.

The project is due to be completed by the end of the year, with TRAC planned to go-live at the end of the first quarter, while CREDOC will be rolled-out during fourth quarter.

Dmitry Derkatch, General Director at Bank GPB International SA, declared: “MIT’s extensive functionalities and expertise in Trade Finance were a perfect fit to our organization. The systems are scalable to support our ambition of strongly increasing our Commodity Finance volumes in the coming months”.

“We are proud to count another prestigious reference in our community of users” said Paul Cohen-Dumani, General Manager at MIT, adding that “the combination of our solution TRAC and CREDOC provides a key differentiator for us in the market, and the adoption by Gazprombank in Luxembourg is yet another confirmation that our strategic options were accurate.”

Bank GPB International S.A. was established in 2013 (as "GPB International S.A.") as a 100% subsidiary of Gazprombank (Joint-stock Company), which is the third largest financial institution in Russia. Having deep expertise on Russian as well as European financial markets the Bank offers a broad range of financial services and provides individually customized solutions in the following areas:

Gazprombank has successfully operated in the banking market since 1990. Founded by the world's largest gas producer and exporter Gazpromto provide banking services for gas industry enterprises, Gazprombank has since becomea leader in the banking sector, which key performance indicators place the Bank among the top three banks of Russia.

Gazprombank as a universal financial institution delivers a wide range of banking and investment services forover 45,000 corporate and about4 million private clients.

Gazprombank invests and lends to companiesin major sectors of the economy – oil and petrochemical industry, metallurgy, machine building, nuclear industry, electric power industry, real estate construction, transport, telecommunications and trade. Diversified client base enables a strong growth of a corporate loan portfolio and the retail business also shows sustainable growth. Despite of a rapid growth of the loan portfolio, efficient risk policy and prudent approach to borrowers allow the Bank to maintain a ratio of problem and non-performing loans at the lowest level among the largest Russian banks.

Gazprombank's network across Russia extends from Kaliningrad in the west to Youzhno-Sakhalinsk in the east. The total number of offices delivering customer friendly high-quality banking and depository services under the single brand name of Gazprombank exceeds 390.

Gazprombank was twice awarded by The Banker Magazine as “The Bank of the Year in Russia” in 2001 and 2005.

MIT successfully acquired yet another new major customer when it signed a contract with OCBC Bank, on May 10th 2016 to support the bank’s Commodity Trade Finance business with its TRAC (Trade Risk Active Control) system.

"We are excited to break into the Asian market”, says Paul Cohen Dumani, General Manager at MIT, adding that “MIT increases its footprint in Singapore with NATIXIS Singapore already using TRAC”. Headquartered in Singapore, OCBC Bank is the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the world’s most highly-rated banks, with an Aa1 rating from Moody’s. Recognised for its financial strength and stability, OCBC Bank has been ranked Asean’s strongest bank and among the world’s five strongest banks by Bloomberg Markets for five consecutive years since the ranking’s inception in 2011.

Maggie Cheong, Head of Transaction and Collateral Management-Global Commodities Finance at OCBC explains that “We have chosen the TRAC system as it provides the best fit to our needs in monitoring structured trade transactions.Another key factor in our decision is MIT’s experience in supporting major trade financing service providers globally”.

In order to capitalize on this major achievement, MIT is due to open an official representative office in Singapore in the summer. This new office shall serve as base of operations for the ASIA PACIFIC region.

MIT (Micro Informatique & Technologies SA) has just officially completed the opening of an office in Singapore, which will act as MIT operational centre for the Asia Pacific region. Yet another achievement for MIT following its recent announcement that its TRAC (Trade Risk Active Control) Collateral Management system had recently been selected by OCBC to support its growing Trade Commodity Finance business in Asia. The office will already serve two customers in Singapore, namely OCBC and NATIXIS, but plans to grow significantly its regional Customer base within the next two years, and extend its reach well beyond Singapore.

Jean-luc Spinardi, long-time member of the MIT management team, has been appointed “Regional APAC Manager”. Spinardi will run the Singapore office for MIT, and will be in charge of promoting MIT products throughout the region. Jean-luc Spinardi declared “I am very excited with this new challenge, and I am confident MIT’s expertise in Trade Commodity Finance will help our Company to be successful in Asia, and especially in Singapore, the largest Commodity Trade Finance hub in the region”.

Sberbank (Switzerland) AG has deployed MIT’s middle to back-office Trade Finance platform. The contract was signed last year; Sberbank (Switzerland) AG chose the MIT platform after considering several alternatives both for back-office and middle-office components. This was a logical step as Sberbank CIB’s Zurich-based office continues to be a center for its fast growing Commodity Trade Finance (CTF) business.

The MIT platform chosen by the bank comprises CREDOC, the flagship back-end trade finance solution from the Swiss software editor, and TRAC, its middle/front collateral management system, which provide support for transactional commodity finance and structured trade finance.

The project was split into two major phases. The first phase saw the go-live of CREDOC at the end of last year. The second phase started in parallel to CREDOC’s go-live, and was related to the implementation of TRAC, which was completed last month.

Igor Ukrasin, head of Corporate Banking at Sberbank (Switzerland) AG said: “It made perfect sense for us to choose MIT because of their proven expertise both in vanilla trade finance and structured commodity finance. We are very pleased with the outcome – the solution provider met all project deadlines."

“It is exciting for us to start a partnership with Sberbank CIB knowing that Sberbank intends to develop CTF across the group,” said Paul Cohen-Dumani, General Manager at MIT, adding that “We are still very much the only software editor on the market that can provide both a back-end trade finance system along with a trade collateral management solution; this obviously sent a strong message to the Bank, and continues to send a strong message to the market.”

Sberbank (Switzerland) AG is part of Sberbank CIB[1]– the corporate and investment banking business of Sberbank Group. Its headquarters are located in Zurich. Sberbank CIB provides integrated financing and advisory services to more than 7 000 major corporations, financial institutions and governments.

Sberbank (Switzerland) AG works with international subsidiaries and holding companies of Sberbank Group’s clients in the market to actively develop services for clients carrying out trading and investment activities in any of the countries where the Group is present. Sberbank (Switzerland) AG operates in accordance with the requirements of Basel III and Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).

Sberbank is Russia’s largest banking player, accounting for almost half of Russian retail deposits and almost one third of banking sector assets as the key lender to the national economy.

Sberbank is a universal banking institution and is among the Top Three European banks by market capitalisation and balance sheet size.Its integrated product offering spans retail, commercial, corporate and investment banking, asset management and financing.

Sberbank now has subsidiaries in 20 countries across the CIS, Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe. The bankis also present in key financial centres such as London, New York and Zurich and in other large emerging markets such as China and India.